It does depend on the printer, most of the Dot matrix printers that I had had enough memory in them to define the pixels of the char so printing chars was simple. But because there was no such thing as GUI's back then, it wasn't a big feature of most printers!!
-----Original Message----- From: Dick Applebaum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2001 2:52 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: "Why aren't there more CF programmers out there?" At 9:27 AM -0500 11/28/01, lsellers wrote: >At 08:06 AM 11/28/2001 -0600, you wrote: >>now it makes sense. 1k of memory. I can almost do the math in my head. >> >>someone should build a web based IBM 650 computer emulator so that we can >>program in octal absolute... or early versions of assembler. >> >>you know just so when we go to parties with the 60 to 70 (20 somethings in >>the 50's) techie types we can talk about our experience with octal absolute. >> >>(you know start programming on bar napkins... and these days, you might be >>able to load and test your app on your WAP phone.) > >/-) > >It's a true story that when I got my first computer (which had a fat 4k) at >13 I couldn't afford to buy an assembler for it to program with so... I HAD >to learn straight machine language and how to compute hexadecimal >branchings in my head. So I'm already there dude, I'm already there. /-) Altair? Northstar? Trash-80? My first computer, an Apple ][, had 2 built-in BASIC Interpreters and A mini-assembler. Mainframes had an even lower level of programming (called microprogramming) that was used... it dealt with only a few instructions such as: Open/Close gate, BitFlip, And, Or, etc.) >(And one of the first things I did was write my own dot-matrix graphics >printer driver (in machine) so I could print the pictures I made with the >graphics editor I wrote. Hee.) Complicated, no doubt, by the fact that: a character or image was made up of vertical rows and horizontal columns of dots the printer could print only 1 row at a time to increase speed, you had to print each row, bostrophedonically*, on the fly. * That's the way they talked in those days. Bostrophedonic, is a 2-bit word for row-by-row, bi-directional, start-to-end, end-to-start... similar to the way an ox plows a field. >More seriously though, I think any serious programmer should take a spin >with assembly or machine. It definitely allows you a better understanding >of just exactly what your code (even something so high-level as cf) is >actually doing and why some programming styles or methodologies actually >work better than others. I agree with this... You gain appreciation for the power of CF and, especially, the ease of writing and maintaining a program with CF. My original post to this thread was an attempt to illustrate (humorously?) how ridiculous it is to evaluate a tool (CF, FP, etc.) *only* by its number of users... we'd all be driving Toyotas! Dick >--min > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
